UB's Uncrowned Queens Project to Hit the Airwaves in May

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Since 1999, the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women at the University at Buffalo has collected, preserved and presented the written and oral histories of hundreds of female African-American community builders across Western New York state and southern Ontario.

Now, with a $280,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the institute, in partnership with WNED Corp., is preparing a series of 26 one-hour radio programs derived from its Uncrowned Queens archive that will begin broadcasting in May.

The institute was co-founded and is co-directed by UB Senior Education Specialists Barbara Nevergold, Ph.D., and Peggy Brooks-Bertram, Dr. P.H., Ph.D.

"If the first year of the project is successful," Brooks-Bertram, says, "CPB will award up to $560,000 in additional grants to continue it through a second and third year. This will permit us to develop Uncrowned Queens radio projects in 10-15 communities throughout the country using the model we develop with WNED."

The series is tentatively titled "Uncrowned Queens: Voices from the Community." The programs, to be produced by Lorna C. Hill for WNED, will feature Hill's interviews with 78 of the Uncrowned Queens from Western New York -- three per program.

Each program will end with a commentary by Nevergold and Brooks-Bertram, who say that WNED, is working to identify national figures to introduce the programs.

Also in the first year, the Uncrowned Queens Web site will be updated to permit Web broadcast of the on-air radio programs and to include other enhancements. The Web site can be accessed at http://www.buffalo.edu/uncrownedqueens/.

Brooks-Bertram says, "This is the first step in our plan to move the collection from its static HTML-scripted architecture to a dynamic data-driven Web architecture."

"The new architecture could be replicated by Uncrowned Queens franchises anywhere in the world," says Nevergold.

"It also will allow the institute to manage the digital assets -- biographies, digital images, media files and oral histories -- contributed by Uncrowned Queens honorees across the country, and to establish an inter-operative relationship with related digital library projects," she says.

The original digital archive was developed with funding from a grant from the UB Educational Technology Center, which now will provide the upgrade with a $28,000 sub-grant from the Uncrowned Queens project.

Brooks-Bertram says the institute plans to make UB the permanent repository for Uncrowned Queens digital projects produced in the U.S. and abroad, which will add a unique and valuable body of research materials to the UB archival collections.

Brooks-Bertram says, "Many cities, regions or states, including Washington D.C., cities in California, Michigan, New Jersey, the American south and southwest and elsewhere, already have expressed great interest in collecting histories of Uncrowned Queens in their areas and producing radio programs under this grant, so we're off to an encouraging start. It is very exciting."

She and Nevergold now are at work on the first of these projects in Oklahoma in connection with the Oklahoma Centennial Commission. They are collecting biographies and photos of Oklahoman women, many of which now appear on the UB Uncrowned Queens Web site. Between 100 and 200 of those women will be featured into a special volume, "Uncrowned Queens: African American Women Community Builders of Oklahoma, 1907-2007."  Numerous African-American women's organizations in Oklahoma are working with Brooks-Bertram and Nevergold on this project. 

The digital and hard copy archive of the histories and photographs of more than 700 Uncrowned Queens from Western New York and other cities in New York State now are collected in the digital archives in the Uncrowned Queens Web site.